Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, everybody, for coming out this afternoon. It's an unusually early spring this year in Saskatchewan, and I think a lot of you would rather be out in the field today than sitting here listening to us at this meeting. But what you are doing here is very important, and I want you to recognize that it is appreciated that you are taking the time to come here.
I get confused. People say, we have to protect the Canadian Wheat Board, but we don't want to trade. Well, if we don't trade, the Canadian Wheat Board doesn't do anything. All it does is trade. If you talk to the Canadian Wheat Board, which I have done, the first thing they say is to get the Colombia free trade agreement done, get the Peru trade agreement done, get a trade agreement with Morocco done so that we can compete against the U.S. in those markets.
So I find this to be speaking out of both sides of your mouth here, when you look at how important trade is. If we didn't have trade now, we wouldn't be here. That's the point that a lot of people have to understand: we would not be in this hall, because there would be nobody farming in this area. If we went to domestic supply, we could get rid of probably about 70% of our farmers.
Brad, you worked with the canola industry. You could maybe give us some background on how important is trade for canola. If it weren't there, where would we be?